The Dark Design by Phillip Jose Farmer

He bent down and reached out until he touched cloth. His fingers moved along, traced a curve-Loghu’s breast under the cloth-and he backed out and closed the door.

Silently, his heart thudding so fast he could almost believe that it could be heard throughout the cabin, he moved to Monat’s partition. His ear against the door, he listened. Silence. He straightened, opened the door, and felt into the upper bunk. Monat was not there, but he could be sleeping in the lower bunk. If so, his breathing was not audible.

His hand slid over unoccupied cloths.

Cursing softly, he groped back to the deck.

Kazz stepped out of the fog with his fist raised.

“Wallah! What’s the matter?”

“They’re both gone,” Burton said.

“But. . . how could that be?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Monat knew that something was wrong. He’s the most sensitive person I’ve ever met; he can read your slightest expression, detect the feeblest nuance in your voice. Or perhaps he heard you wake up Besst, investigated, and guessed the truth. For all I know, he may have been listening to us outside the door of the hut.”

“Neither Besst or me made any noise. We was as silent as a weasel sneaking up on a rabbit.”

“I know. Look, around. See if our launch is missing.”

He met Kazz coining around the other way.

“The boats’re all here.”

27

Burton roused Lochu and Alice. While they drank hot coffee, he outlined everything that had happened to him in connec­tion with the Ethicals. They were stunned, but they kept silent until he had finished. Questions hailstormed him then, but he said that he would answer them later. It would be dawn shortly, which meant that they had to put their grails on the stone for breakfast.

Alice was the only one who had not said anything. It was evident from her narrowed eyes and tight lips that she was furious.

“I am sorry that I had to keep all this from you,” Burton said. “But surely you can see how necessary it was? What if I told you everything and then the Ethicals grabbed you, as they did me? They could have read your mind and discovered that they had erred in thinking they had erased relevant portions of my memory.”

“They didn’t do so,” she said. “Why should they have even thought of that?”

“How do you know they didn’t?” he said. “You wouldn’t remember it if they had done it.”

That gave her another shock. Nevertheless, she did not speak again until after breakfast.

This took place in unusual weather. Normally, the sun quickly burned off the fog. The sky was clear the rest of the day in the tropical zone or until midaftemoon in the temperate zones. In the latter, clouds quickly gathered, rain fell for fifteen minutes or so, and then the clouds disappeared.

This morning, however, black masses rolled between sun and earth. Lightning flickered as if chips of the bright sky above the clouds were falling through. Thunder was the muttering of a giant behind the mountains. A pale light spread over the land, staining it brownish-yellow. The faces around the grailstone looked as if a blight had settled upon them.

Kazz and Besst hunched down uneasily over their food and looked around as if they expected an unwelcome visitor. He mut­tered in his native tongue, “The-Bear-Who-Collects-The-Bad is walking.”

Besst almost whined. “We must find a hut to hide in. It is not good to be near the water when he walks.”

The others looked as if they were going to seek shelter, too. Burton stood up and said loudly, “One moment, please! I’m inter­ested in finding out if any of you are missing a boat!”

A man said, “Why?”

“Two of my crew deserted last night, and it’s possible that they stole a boat to get away.”

Forgetting about the coming storm, the party scattered to look along the bank. Within a minute, a man reported that his dugout was gone.

“They’re far away by now,” Kazz said. “But did they go up or down The River?”

“If there was a signal system in this area, we could find out quickly enough,” Burton said. “Unless, of course, they beached their boat and went into the hills to hide.”